Jews Come Out of the Cultural Closet

Ah, what a time to be a Jew. No slavery, no pogroms, no shtetlech, no concentration camps. And for the first time ever, we're cool!

On Wednesday's Daily Show, Jon Stewart Jewed it up with Ted Koppel--"It's like when you're sitting there at Passover..."--as he now does whenever he has on a fellow tribe member and I'm thinking, Jesus. This is almost too much. One more "mishpocheh" or "punim" and I might get nauseous.

(And incidentally, Koppel with Stewart...How many degrees does that put me from Stephen Colbert?)
I mean, yeah, there have always been Jewish entertainers, as is the case in any population that would otherwise be depressed by all the oppression and stuff. I'm sure up in the Catskills they were making gefilte fish gags. But for a while there, even Jewish comedians purveying obviously Jewish humor weren't acknowledging that they were Jewish.

Take Seinfeld. (Please.) His show was all about New York Jews and their neurotic nothing-doing. But did Jerry and Elaine ever flake on a Bat Mitzvah invite or scalp for High Holy Day tickets? Contrast that with Seinfeld co-producer Larry David's current show Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which characters do both. Also on HBO, the most Jewish character ever played by a gentile: Entourage's deliciously dickish Ari Gold.



Sarah Silverman debuted her Comedy Central show last year by warning viewers to expect "full frontal Jewdity."

Shoot, had he come up these days, Jon might not even have felt the need to change his name to Stewart.

And it's not just the comedy world. Did the Beastie Boys ever rap about the girlies with the big ole tukheses? Hell no. But hip hop producer Scott Storch--who I'm so not endorsing, btw--calls his production company Tuff Jew. And 50 Cent's team of lawyers? They're called Jew Unit.



I could go on. I already mentioned Stephen Colbert's 1-800-OOPS-JEW Atonement Line. And one channel up, on E!, Sal Masekela (who is, by the way, the son of South African jazz legend Hugh Masekela, in case you, like me, were wondering like crazy) was wishing the Daily 10 viewership a "Shanah Tovah."

For a little Jewess who grew up in a desert exurb in which "Jew" was not even, for better or worse, a category (the categories: white, black, Mexican), it's all very heartening. When Adam Sandler came out with the Hanukkah Song, I thought that was as good as it was gonna get.

UPDATE: Check out Jews Come Out Part Tsvey.

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Who I'm Worshiping Now: The Answers

Great sleuthwork, Clebketeers. Lolo wins and Buffy gets a prize, too.

THE ANSWERS:

1. The Known World author Edward P. Jones.

2. TV personality & Clebbie style idol Debbie Matenopoulos.

3. Comedian Demetri Martin. "Other things stop working or they break. But batteries--they die."

4. Person Who Thinks She Can Dance, Sabra. (Or as the show "So You Think You Can Dance" hokily crowned her, "America's Favorite Dancer.")

5. The man Kanye calls to fix his beats: Timbaland. Maybe during their next chat he can also enlighten Mr. West on the delicate art of being a producer who raps. Timbaland knows his $500,000 beats need nothing but a little whipped cream and maybe a cherry, while Kanye smothers on all his crappy bananas and nuts and hot fudge.

6. I haven't once watched her new show 30 Rock because it's on some sort of channel with a low number during the evening hours. But I still have love for Tina Fey.

7. Carmela Polwick is a very small cat. Much smaller than Inguento. Sorry, Inguento.

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Who I'm Worshiping Now

I've oft been accused of fickle hero worship. Of course that's hogwash. Anyway, here's...

WHO I'M WORSHIPING NOW:
Can you name all seven?



































It's the Greeks, Blacks and Cats edition!


HINTS for people other than Buffy and Brian, who should be able to get a least five each without hints:

1. Proves great work is worth percolating.
2. Cat and Sal would otherwise be awkward.
3. Bm-sh-bm-sh-bm-sh-bm-chicky-chicky: TRENDS.
4. So you think you can...
5. Actually does have motorboat, huge ole house.
6. I forgive the AmEx ad.
7. Seen here worshiping me.


Check out the last edition of Who I'm Worshiping Now.

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Days of "\ ä \"

A Pronunciation Guide for Gentiles

Stephen Colbert's genetic lineage testing gave him a 75% shot of being Jewish. But the 25% must have won, because as he plugs his 1-888-OOPS-JEW Days of Awe atonement line, he says:

R\ä\SH H\ä\SH\ä\N\ä\
(RAH-SHAH-SHAH-NAH)

and

Y\ä\M K\i\P\u\R
(YAHM KIH-POOR)

As do many gentiles, even those with Jew friends like me or Jon Stewart. I understand. It's weird.

We American Jews make this more confusing by our own ambivalence. We vascillate between old-timey Ashkenaziphilic Yiddish and the ancient/modern Sephardiphilic Hebrew.

It is sometimes said (by Brian), that all rappers are either enunciaters or slurrers. If the two great Jewish languages were rappers, let's just say Hebrew would be the enunciater. Thus the more formal, upright Hebrew pronunciations:

R\o\SH H\ [a'] \SH\ [a'] \N\ [a'] \
[ROSH (rhymes with "roach," not "posh") HAH-SHAH NAH]

and

Y\o\M K\E\P\u\R
[YOME (rhymes with "tome," not "Tom") KEY-POOR]


But when I was a kid, everybody I knew used Americanized Yiddish names for the High Holy Days:

R\ə\SH\ə\ SH\ə\N\ə\
[RUSHA SHUNNA]

and

Y\u\M K\i\PR
[YUM KIPPER]

Got it? Is my poor use of diacritical marks helping?

Seems nowadays nobody but old American Jews use the Yiddishized "Yum Kipper," so I've adapted to the Hebraicized "Yome Key-poor." But the Hebrew sounds too formal for me for New Year's. I still say "Rusha Shunna."

Here's one everyone says right:

SHANAH TOVAH!

WOOHOO! 5768!

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Harvest Porn

You know you want it.



In each and every one of my first five seasons of gardening, I tried to grow tomatoes and--to greater and lesser extents--failed.

The first year I planted my pots of sorry-ass Sweet 100s on a balcony in Brooklyn with only morning sun. Needless to say, the maters sucked. The next year, I grew glorious heirloom beefsteaks in a sunny community garden plot--and found the two-pounders smashed on the ground by no-good kids just before they ripened.


In my real garden in Oakland, my first year's tomatoes succumbed to verticillium wilt. The beautiful vines turned yellow and then brown and I watched, hapless, helpless, hopeless. The next year, to avoid the dread disease, I planted in ginormo pots. But in my greed and haste, I put two plants to a pot, and by mid-summer they were starving.







Last year, one plant succeeded: a hybrid of acclaimed Italian sauce variety San Marzano called (SO appropriately) Super Marzano. But I didn't want just a bunch of damn paste tomatoes. I wanted big, pornographic heirlooms to slice into a caprese.

So perhaps you'll pardon a bit of horn tootage; I have journeyed from the edge of despair back to faith.

This year I grew EIGHT MILLION* tomatoes:





*Statement should not be taken literally.



Post Script

This has nothing to do with garden porn (well, not much anyway), but I didn't want to give these pictures their own post. I took them at a car show we somehow ended up at in SanJo. I shouldn't pretend not to know: we ended up there because DJ Big Man 808, of the Bay Area Record Rockers, Brian's crew, got us free passes. His brother is the king of car shows and judged the Car-Hopping Contest, a hydraulic olympics.




But I really want to talk to you about the skanks. These of course are the charming young ladies (the youngest looked fifteen) who pose in hoochie outfits with the cars. I did not photograph them posing, as many guys did, because I wanted to capture their humanity. They are seen here walking, standing around and all too human.







What bothers me so much about the skanks--well, many things--but what bothers me most about them is that cars and skanks have nothing to do with each other other than the fact that men want to ogle both. I find this infuriating.

Why should anyone get to have such absurd fantasies fulfilled? And at the cost of another person's dignity, no less. I would love to have a gardening video narrated by The Game wearing a wifebeater and pulling the red Bloods bandanna out of his back jeans pocket to wipe the sweat off his brow as he transplants seedlings--but I don't expect to have this fantasy provided. It just wouldn't be right.

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*!POP!* Culture Report

David Montero said he feared pop culture was on the decline. I scoffed. I told him there was lots of great new hip hop--although Brian, responsible for bringing said hip hop into our home, Eeyored it and agreed with Montero and Nas that hip hop is dead.

What about Game's "Olde English," the most heart-wrenchingly beautiful song ever? (No, ever. It's not up for debate.) And that Timbaland beat for "The Way I Are" is so awesome that yesterday I played it on my pretend iPod in my head for 35 minutes on the elliptical. (I ain't got no Visa/I ain't got no Red American Express. I burned like a whole muffin's worth of calories!) Even the unbearable ego of Kanye West has managed to turn out two hot new tracks, I told Montero with irrepressible optimism. He's been in Pakistan, so he wasn't up on all this.

He moped on, But what about rock and tv and...Well, said I, what about that Killers song that goes, I don't shine if you don't shine and Sarah Silverman and Stephen Colbert with their own shows? Maybe it's just the first time I've descended from my mountain lair of intellectual superiority to pay attention, but this moment in pop culture seems just great to me. Fandamntastic. Seriously, do you watch Best Week Ever?

Of course I was positioning myself rather dangerously.

The very next day there was this adorable call-and-response on Wild 94.9:

Baby where'd you get your body from
Tell me where'd you get your body from
Baby where'd you get your body from
Tell me where'd you get your body fromI got it from my mama
I got it from my mama
I got it from my mama

At first I couldn't imagine who was responsible for this schlock. I should have put it together immediately that only will.i.am.shameless could make such a horrible, horrible song with a super catchy beat and only Fergie could lower herself enough to sing, All of this stuff right here/I got all this from my mama. As if family shit isn't crazy enough, now we have to bring in this creepy sexiness inheritance idea.

It didn't get better when I heard the new Justin Timberlake/50 Cent song, which sounded like a good idea at first. This track had "matchmaker" written all over it. By which I mean not that it sounded like it should have been on the "Fiddler on the Roof" soundtrack, but that it sounded like a pairing strategically designed by a focus group for audience maximization rather than an organic creative collaboration. I can just imagine some Yenta at the studio thinking, Fitty needs to reach more middle American white kids and Justin needs better hip hop cred...
Oh well.

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Globalidatin

When my friends, and even my own kin, are turning up with people named Assaf and Mehr on their arms, from Tel Aviv and Lahore, respectively, or contemplating a move to Montreal to be with a canadien airplane mechanic, I have to wonder: has this globalization thing gone too far?

Brian's from Anaheim, and what with the OC/Inland Empire beef, I didn't know if our relationship could make it. When it's 85 degrees and he's wilting from "the heat," I still wonder, Is this going to work out? Are we just...too different?

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